


The Great Trinity Biscuit Party

by Pink_Dalek



Series: RA Blues [4]
Category: Endeavour
Genre: College AU, Gen, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 03:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18202697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Dalek/pseuds/Pink_Dalek
Summary: This prompt was: one character is baking cookies late at night. The other one is annoyed by this. Then it grew. Also, my favorite Joan quote of the entire show is in this one.





	The Great Trinity Biscuit Party

**Author's Note:**

> In the UK cookies are called biscuits, but I ran across a mention that ones like chocolate-chip are called cookies, as well as the oversized ones we Yankees make.

Spring in Oxford was like a picture postcard. It seemed everything was blooming, the skies were blue more often, and they were coming down the home stretch of the school year. Even Morse had perked up: he’d stopped drinking, was attending classes again, and had gotten into the postgrad program he wanted. Although the rumor going around his circle of friends, that Henry had given Susan chlamydia, might have been part of his improved mood.

In the middle of term Joan and Shirley were deep in their books one night when Joan looked up.  “I want cookies.”

“I’ve got some Hobnobs in my desk.”

“No, chocolate chip cookies.”

Shirley looked at her helplessly. “Why’d you have to say it? Chocolate chip cookies sound amazing. But it’s late.”

“That little shop on Banbury Road is open until one. We could make it if we hurry.” The girls giggled as they raced from the dorm. They returned with loaded shopping bags and went straight to the floor lounge, which had a fridge, sink, and cooker. Most of the floor were in their rooms, asleep or studying.

 

Morse was bent over his notes, working feverishly on a paper for his Aristotle class and wishing he could afford his own computer. As it was he had to do everything longhand, then reserve time in one of the computer labs to type it up and give it a final edit. It was an inefficient process, and he was sick of it. Fortunately Peter Jakes was finishing up his degree and had agreed to sell his laptop cheaply to Morse at the end of term, so he’d have it for his graduate work. Peter had a job lined up in the City, and would be able to buy a slick new one.

Morse was tired and hungry. Dinner had been hours ago, and the apple he’d smuggled from the dining hall was long gone. He was setting aside his stipend for the laptop, so he couldn’t really nip out for something. Just then he caught a whiff of baking chocolate and sniffed. Chocolate chip cookies? His stomach growled.

He went back to work, but it was impossible to concentrate as the aroma of chocolate chip cookies grew stronger. 

He pushed back his chair and stood, grumbling under his breath, and left his room. Normally he’d have more time for the paper, but he’d had to get extensions on his Hilary classes and have those grades suspended until he finished that work, which had involved groveling to his professors. They’d agreed, at least. He was one of the better students in his year, and they all knew he was trying to balance school, work, and life in general. He’d spent the first few weeks of Trinity finishing up the work for those classes, while trying to stay caught up in his current ones.

 

There was a chatter of voices coming from the floor lounge. He poked his head into the room to find Joan and Shirley in the middle of a group of pajama-clad floormates. Everyone was munching on cookies, and Shirley was making George stir the next batch for her. The lounge was toasty warm from the oven and a couple of kettles were plugged in for tea. It was such a picture of cozy friendship that his heart twisted as he remembered his first year with his friends, full of hope and plans, and not yet bogged down in the final, exhausting work for a degree while recovering from a broken heart.

A sudden, vicious burst of ill humor overwhelmed him. “Oi! It’s after one! Have you any idea how much noise you’re making? And what are you doing baking at this time of night?”

They stared at him like he was the Grinch turned up in the middle of Whoville’s Christmas feast. Joan looked at him and saw a tired, stressed, stroppy bloke who needed a few minutes’s respite. She picked up a cookie and sailed over to him. “Here. You need chocolate, Morse.”

Oh. Oh god, this was the best thing he’d tasted in ages. Warm, with melty chocolate and a hint of vanilla and cinnamon. Morse melted like a warm chocolate chip himself, and Joan saw it. He closed his eyes and made a rumble of pleasure in his throat that sent an unexpected shiver down her spine. He was good-looking, and when he wasn’t holding everyone at arm’s length he was actually quite kind, with a dry sense of humor. 

“This is amazing.” Morse opened his eyes. “You lot are lucky. I miss first year. Nothing but wide-open horizons and new friends.”

He sounded so plaintive and tired it broke Joan’s warm heart. “Sit down with us, take a break.” 

“I don’t have time. I’ve got so much work— this paper— “

 “Ten or fifteen minutes won’t make any difference, and you sound like you need a break.”

 Morse found himself on the battered sofa between George and Maureen.

 “Okay, that’s mixed enough,” Shirley told George. “Help me drop the dough on the cookie sheet. Joanie, go sit. You baked the first batch.”

 Joan dropped onto the space beside Morse. “What do you have to do for your paper?”

 “Get it written well enough to take it to the computer lab and type it up. It doesn’t help that I’m such a slow typist.”

 “You don’t have a computer?” Gillian asked, surprised.

 “Can’t afford one. Peter Jakes is going to sell me his laptop once this term ends.”

 Joan thought for a moment. “Once you’ve got it ready, bring it to me. It won’t take long for me to type it. We can put it on a thumb drive for you to edit in the lab.”

 “You don’t have to— I think it’s better if I— “

 “I think it’s better if you just do as you’re told,” Joan answered firmly.

 

 The next evening Morse knocked shyly at the door of 310. “Were you serious about typing my paper?”

 “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have offered. Is it ready?”

 Morse nodded. He perched on the edge of her bed while she looked it over, then she opened her laptop and started typing, fingers flying over the keyboard.

 Shirley was fretting over a paper for her English class. “Morse, could you proofread this for me? I need some feedback.”

 “Of course.”

 By the time Joan finished typing his paper, Morse and Shirley’s heads were bent over her paper, Morse making editorial suggestions as his pencil zigzagged over the pages.

 “You’re brilliant at this. You should be a teacher,” Shirley enthused.

 “I’ll be teaching undergraduates next year as part of my program.”

 “You’ll be great.”

 “I hope so.”

 “Finished,” Joan announced.

 “Already? I should hire you to type all my papers. I don’t know what I could pay you, though.”

 “You’re a pro at smuggling food out of the dining commons.”

 “Are you serious?”

 “Figure out a way to get a doughnut out of there, and we’ve got a deal.”

 Morse got a calculating look. “Glazed or powdered?”

 “Glazed.”

 “It might lose a bit of frosting along the way.”

 “That’s okay. Chocolate?”

 “I’ll bring you one tomorrow. For this paper.”

 “Okay. Come edit this.”

 The next morning Morse tapped at Joan’s door, producing a napkin-wrapped doughnut from somewhere in his hoodie. “Good enough?”

 “Fantastic!”

 

Joan typed up his papers in exchange for fruit and pastries smuggled from the dining room. One night, she came back to her room cross and hungry, having missed dinner. There was a note on her door. Check the oven, it said.

The common room oven was on low. A sign on its door said Joan’s Dinner. If anyone else eats this I will hunt you down. A dorm plate was inside, piled with the dining room’s attempt at spaghetti bolognese and mixed vegetables. A piece of garlic bread loosely wrapped in foil sat next to it. He’d even smuggled out silverware for her. “Morse, you are a lifesaver,” Joan murmured, grabbing her dinner and taking it back to her room.

After she’d eaten and done the bit of washing up, she knocked on Morse’s door. “How on earth did you steal an entire dinner?”

“First of all, I did not steal it. You paid for the complete meal program. They owed you a dinner,” was the lofty answer. “Secondly, I can’t let everyone know my secrets.”

“All right, be that way.” Joan grinned up at him. “What do you need typed?”

“Nothing right now. Shirley mentioned at dinner that you were stuck doing a makeup lab, so I thought you’d like dinner.”

“Well, I did. Thank you.”

 

Before they knew it term was over and with it, the school year. Morse went to his commencement at Lonsdale in a secondhand suit under his academic robes. He was unsurprised that Cyril and Gwen hadn’t come, but still disappointed. It wasn’t every day one’s son/stepson received a bachelor’s with honours and a First. But when his name was called he heard cheering from somewhere in the crowd.

Afterward, standing awkwardly apart while his friends and classmates were congratulated and hugged by their parents, Morse heard his name called. He looked up and his jaw dropped. “Joycie?”

His little sister launched herself at him in a massive hug. “I told Mum and Dad it was rotten not to come see you get your degree. I’ve been babysitting the neighbor kids, so I had money for a train ticket.”

“Joyce Linnet Morse, you’re twelve!”

“Thirteen next month.” Joyce decided it was a good idea to change the subject. “Then I met your friends when I got here.”

“Friends?” Antony and Bruce and the rest were with Henry and Susan and her parents.

Joyce waved a hand to the other side. Joan, Shirley, and George were there, dressed in the best they could cobble together and beaming. “We told them Shirley was your sister, George and I were your cousins, and that your parents couldn’t come because of a family emergency,” Joan told him.

“I was going to take the afternoon train home, but Joan and Shirley said I could kip in their room tonight.”

Morse’s head spun. “You— you all came?” He felt unexpectedly warm inside.

“We should celebrate,” George suggested. “The Lamb and Flag?”

“No!” Joan almost shouted. “My dad and his work mates are likely to be there.”

They ended up at the White Horse, sharing a big plate of chips while Joyce had a squash and the others had beer. “I can’t believe I did it,” Morse kept mumbling dazedly. “I can’t believe you came.”

Joyce thought their dorm terribly exciting, and even lining up for dorm food didn’t dampen her enthusiasm. At this point the staff didn’t care who turned up to eat, and didn’t bat an eye. She ended up falling asleep mid-chatter on Morse’s bed that night, so Joan and Shirley gave him the extra bedding they had so he could make a sort of nest on his floor. It was uncomfortable, but he was so elated and excited he didn’t care.

He saw Joyce off the next morning, then started packing up his room. He had a bedsit lined up, and once everyone left the dorm at week’s end, he’d move there.

 

Moving-out day was bittersweet. Peter was off to the City with his finance degree, Alice was going home for awhile, and the undergrads were scattering for the summer. Morse was helping Shirley carry her stuff down to her parents’ car when he saw a vaguely familiar, looming figure step out of a black sedan.

“Joanie! Your dad’s here!” Shirley yelled towards their open window. “Hi, Mr. Thursday.”

“Hello, Shirley, Morse.” That gimlet eye hadn’t changed one whit, Morse noted.

When they returned to 310, Joan was packing up the curtains while her dad took down the curtain rod. “Mum’s visiting Aunt Renie. She’s not been well.”

Morse helped Thursday carry boxes downstairs while Joan and Shirley chatted about their plans. They’d decided to get a flat together in the autumn and had already reserved one.

“Good year?” Thursday asked.

“Yes, in the end.”

“Joan said you got a First.”

“I did, and was accepted into the doctoral program I wanted. I didn’t realize she told you anything about me.”

“Not every day she meets someone swears in Latin. I swore in German when the kids were small, but that’s old hat by now.”

“German’s probably an excellent swearing language. I imagine Russian would be, too.”

They put the boxes in the boot, then started back upstairs. “Bugger. Don’t know how you kids charge up these a dozen times a day,” Thursday muttered halfway up. Another trip down, with Joan carrying Doodle’s tank, and Morse saw them off.

“Have a good summer, Morse.”

“You too, Joan. Goodbye, Doodle.”

Doodle waved a claw at him.


End file.
